Cheerskep,
I do not have much time, but I must say that I have never understood how one
could advance or coherently describe this position of yours. I realize that
many have asked you the same question before, but let me ask it again: If
it turns out that cognitive psychologists are correct, and there are in fact
cognitive modules (that, furthermore, can be identified with specific
neurological centres of the brain) that allow for compositional semantics,
would that illustrate the falsity of your position? Would the meaning of
xxxx not simply be the brain states elicited in relation to osome stimulus?
But perhaps more pressingly, what would count as a counter-instance of your
claim. What would falsify it?
Or indeed, more specifically, what is your real target? Reference (what kind
of reference, direct theories? mediated theories?)? meaning? what
exactly? My longstanding impression is that you are trying to draw a
metaphysical conclusion (there is no such thing as The MEaning of XXX) from
a putatively psychological feature (i.e. qualia, and reports concerning them
are subject specific, and to that extent only serviceably communicable). I
do not think you can validly draw this inference (you have, to speak with
Aristotle, inverted the major and minor premises of your argument), nor do I
think that the claim 'there is no the meaning of XXX' is particularly
informative, even if it were true. Life, and all the theoretical
disciplines of which I am aware, appear to continue precisely as they did
before irrespective of whether this claim is true or false. As a warning
against false hypostatization it may be helpful, but that hardly seems to be
your claim.
Come to think of it, you tend to critique most vehemently colloquial uses of
the meaning of XXX, which appear to me to be shorthand for 'within the
context of our discussion, let {a,b,c} be necessary and jointly sufficient
indicators of some property PHI.' Why isn't this implication that so many
listers seem to be aware of not itself sufficient?
On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 1:01 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> In a message dated 6/27/10 11:40:33 AM, [email protected] writes:
>
>
> > We all accept the working premise that the remains of ancient art are
> > representatively distributed across the range of quality. The best of the
> > ancient Greek or Sumerian or Chinese art are in fact the best.
> >
> When I examine what comes to my mind when I read those two sentences, I say
> to myself: I have to disagree; I DON'T accept. What I'm not accepting is
> the somewhat suppressed assumption that there is in some mind-independent
> ontic realm, abtracts entities that are "standards", "qualities", "art".
>
> Conveying my notion here is not easy. Nor will I here try to "prove it".
> I'll only try to convey my idea, and my suspicion about an idea I sense
> Michael has.
>
> I'm ready to call myself a dualist. I believe that there is a "material
> realm" comprising what I think of as "physical objects" -- including other
> human bodies. This is merely to say I'm not a solipsist; I can't "disprove"
> the
> possibility of solipsism, "prove" that you are out there, but I believe it,
> and I'm not interested -- in philosophy -- in maintaining moot positions
> that are non-credible to me.
>
> In addition to material things, I feel that notions, consciousness, are
> entities generically different from material entities. Mental entities are
> genericallyh different from phuysical entities. I'm aware that many
> thinkers
> would deny this; they'd point at a squirming neuron in my brain and say,
> "That's your pain."
>
> What acutely interests me is how many people -- whether they'd call
> themselves dualists or physicalists, also tacitly accept that there is a
> third
> (or second) kind of entity that exists out there in a mind-independent,
> material-independent, realm: abstractions. It's the realm of alleged
> "categories",
> "qualities", "sets", Platonic "forms", "absolute standards", "THE meanings
> of", "relations", "language", "referents", "beauty", "sin", or even "art".
> My position is that though we have notions that we might apply any of these
> labels to, there is no non-notional entity that you might assume the notion
> or word is "referring to".
>
> For example, I claim that mind-independent "meanings" and "names" and
> "referents" are imaginary abstract entities invented by thinkers struggling
> to
> "account for" "communication".
>
> I maintain I can "account for" everything many people would want to call
> "communication" without ever summoning up the non-existent abstract entity
> those people call "THE meaning of" the word.
>
> Again: I am not attempting to "prove" my position in this posting. But I
> maintain that in merely describing the position, I'm doing something more
> interesting that simply asserting, for example, "I don't believe in God."
> That's
> a position everyone has heard about. I'm not aware of anyone's having made
> explicit this fundamentally "trinary" view of "what there is" -- a view
> that
> countless philosophers have tacitly -- in effect unthinkingly --
> entertained through the millenia but that I myself would argue is hard to
> defend.
> That argument is for another posting.
